One of my favourite parts about living in Chinaland is the frequency of the ‘really? Did that really just happen?’ moments. Two of the most memorable of these CHINA (!!) moments showed me the contrasts of China first hand, as I had experience of the western style of medical treatment versus that at the Chinese hospital.
When you first move to China, they want to be sure that you are not bringing with you any unwanted diseases, particularly such delights as HIV, TB etc. In a country so populous (and around five per cent of Chinese people have hepatitis B, which is, well, a pretty damn large amount of people), this is very logical and is appreciated quite substantially by me and my none-diseased bodily unit. Clean blood, clean mind, clean soul or something to that effect. Within the first week of residing in the country, all foreigners must take a thorough medical examination, which involves blood tests, a chest x-ray, internal organ scan (seems the liver survived the Praha years after all), eye test and some test that checks your heart rate and blood pressure but appeared to be more like an electrocution device and was applied with no explanation.
The system implemented to carry out this full body MOT was shockingly efficient. After paying and receiving our barcodes, we were ushered into a changing room and told to strip off and gown up. We were then ordered to one room after another, where, with extreme speed, they checked us over with various equipment and a typically Chinese bedside manner. My personal favourites were the eye test: Me: I’m not wearing my glasses, I can’t see that line. Eye man: Read what it says. Me: I can’t see it. E.M: (impatient tone, slight rising intonation) Just read it. Me: but I CAN’T! The chest x-ray was also especially delightful. I still had my necklace on and so the woman told me to put it in my mouth. There I stood- a thin gown the only thing protecting my modesty, chest shoved out against a metal plate with my necklace in my mouth. China has made me classier than ever before. There were four of us going through the process together and so we kept bumping into each other in the corridor for just enough time to exchange our wide eyed, ‘really?’ before moving to the next numbered room.
The whole process took no more than twenty five minutes; after we had been poked and prodded, had strange metal cuffs strapped to both wrists and ankles and a significant quantity of blood extracted from our veins, (while we were in the same room as each other as a kind of group activity), these three basic strangers seemed much more like friends. Afterwards all I could say was, ‘that was absolutely amazing!’
In contrast to this clean, efficient, slightly imposing experience, my second hospital visit seemed even more shocking. I had been experiencing stomach cramps for a few days and so my LLD sent me with the health insurance woman to Number one people’s hospital of Shanghai. I don’t actually have my insurance card yet, and so the reimbursement would take a while and I didn’t have enough money to pay for a Western doctor up front. Cue 9am Saturday morning in the Chinese part of the Chinese hospital; insert several hundred infirmed people forming a human conveyor belt of chaotic madness. Scribble into the picture a series of dirty waiting rooms, an ayi half-heartedly sweeping up cigarette butts and Pepsi cans from the floor (absence of antiseptic cleaning fluid duly noted) and one slightly overwhelmed British girl who had never been more of a minority in her life. Now, what I am about to impart regarding my full Chinese assimilation should be preceded with the following information: it took less than two hours to do what would take two weeks on the NHS and the whole treatment (seeing the doctor twice, scan, blood test and four different types of medication) cost 300RMB, which equates to exactly £30. Additionally, the hospital use a very effective method of keeping track of who of the hundreds of faces owes what-each person is issued an electronic card, which is swiped by every doctor and specialist you see, this not only contains the amount that is owed but also all details regarding your condition. Compared to the 1930s throwback system in place in Prague, this was really quite pleasing.
Our first mission was to see a doctor and so we joined a que of people for one of the numbered doors on the fourth floor. I was absolutely the only white person in the whole building and so was the subject of much curiosity. However, hospitals have a way of humbling and the stares were not quite of the same intensity as those on the metro. Because of the Chinese people’s impartiality to the custom of queing, a level of polite aggression was necessary. We had to be ready to move seats down towards the doctor’s office the minute the person next to us moved up the line, in case someone planted themselves in our rightful place, which almost happened several times. This had the effect of everyone kind of hovering over the chairs with an expression of slight paranoia. Once I finally got to the see the doctor, I was one of five in the room with four other doctors, the doctor spoke absolutely no English, kept coughing into her unprotected hand and examined me on a table in the middle of this room in full view of all of the other patients. CHINA!!!
Next it was down to floor one and a swift walk through a room full of patients of all ages. There were old people in wheelchairs holding a catheter bag in one hand and a bag of saline solution in the other. Several people lay bleeding on wheely beds or gazing forlornly out from behind half drawn curtains. Of course there was also the token smoker, casually puffing away as if he was waiting for a pint at the bar. ‘I’m in a germ vortex. If this doesn’t kill me, my mum will when she reads my blog,’ I thought. I was hurried to a small booth type thing in the middle of this room; the minute I sat down the woman behind the desk grabbed my arm, tied an elastic band around my upper arm, took a needle out of a sterile packet and with very little warning, shoved the needle into my arm. Once she had finished she threw the bloody needle and tube into a lidless, plastic box to my immediate left where it joined many others of its kind.
My experience of a Chinese hospital doesn’t beat that of a Sri Lankan private hospital where the operating theatre consisted of labelled cardboard boxes: circumcision, endoscopy etc. and where there was blood all over the floor from some poor fellow who’d come before. Or the state hospital where the entire Nuwara Eliya police department had their injections done with recycled needles in a waiting room whose walls sported centimetre thick grime. However, it was an incredibly interesting experience. In a country where people are numbered and the collective, not the individual, is the main consideration, it can be seen that efficiency is the most vital element to medication. They may not be clean but they are thorough and the Chinese have a pretty sturdy constitution, judging from what they’re willing to put in their mouths. When you are but one in 1.4 billion, it becomes easier to understand why politely waiting in line, or having privacy to see the doctor, don’t seem to be factors of much importance. Oh China, you crazy, quirky, potential death trap-happy National day!!
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